I do not watch horror films at all, let alone watch them at the cinema. But what intrigued me from the very beginning about Obsession was the discourse around it. I had never heard any social discourse around a horror film before and no matter what people like to say about “just enjoying movies”, I believe that the conversations that media like films and books spark are important and weighty.

So I went to the theatres and watched Obsession. And then like every other GenZ movie-goer, I came back home and watched a ton of reels about the film. There are conspiracy theories on how Nikki was possessed by Bear’s cat, there is discourse around the self-proclaimed “nice guys” and the limits they would cross to be with women who simply might not be interested in them and there are discussions about the technical limits and the rules of the one-wish willow.

But what I have not heard anyone talk about yet, is the definition of love that the film adopts.

Bear’s wish is worded exactly (I think) as this– “I wish Nikki Freeman would love me more than anything else in the world.” And since I could not get the movie out of my head anyway, this sentence especially kept sticking out to me.

The actors keep being asked in interviews– how else could Bear have worded it to not have this particular set of consequences? But my question is– why did he have these consequences? Why did everything go wrong when all he asked was to be loved? What does it mean to “love” someone more than anything else in the world? Is love obsession, jealousy and attention? Is it co-dependence? Does loving someone the most mean that you can allow no one else to love them at all?

Towards the end of the film, when Bear has swallowed the pills and is trying to kill himself, he tries to puke for a minute, to throw them up. He still wants to live, that is, meaning that Nikki would continue to suffer the consequences of his wish. But it is when Nikki wishes for him to love her more than anything in the world, that he stops. That he allows for his death to happen. What does that mean? Did he sacrifice himself because he finally loved Nikki enough to want to free her?

So can love be sacrificial and kind? And how much of our definitions of love are shaped by social conditioning? Were Bear and Nikki’s concepts of love different?

I think love ends up becoming both the things in the film– obsession and sacrifice. But what decides which form of love is expressed when the wish is made? Is it Bear’s idea of love (obsession, insecurity and co-dependence) that he ends up getting from Nikki and is it Nikki’s idea of love (sacrificial?) that she inspires in Bear with her wish? You tell me.

Welcome back to the discussion on Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky! At this point, I have finished reading the book and have a fair understanding of the plot and characters as far as understanding them is possible (looking at you Stavrogin). In this post however, I only want to talk about Part II of the book.

In my opinion, this part was the most ideologically heavy and psychologically revealing part of the book, at least on the individual level. Nikolay Stavrogin emerged as the core ideological problem that Dostoyevsky is attempting to study and it would not be far-fetched to say that he might be the most intriguing character I have come across in literature ever.

Here are the key things from Part II that I picked up on—

The Conundrum of Nikolay Stavrogin

The first two chapters of Part II are our first insight into who Stavrogin is as a person. His conversations with Pyotr, Kirillov and Shatov give us the idea that he is someone who is ideologically unattached and yet inspires a lot of devotion in people.

Kirillov’s philosophy of the man-god and of the ultimate superiority of self-will and self-determination is built upon the ideas seeded by Nikolay. He believes that by annihilating himself without fear and pain, he would be able to set an example about what an ultimate human should be like and that would be the next generation of humans— the generation of man-gods where everyone will practice the ultimate act of self-determination i.e. suicide.

Shatov, on the other hand, believes God to be essential to the sustenance of the Russian society and again, because of his conversations with Nikolay a few years ago. He is disappointed in Nikolay for becoming an atheist when he is the primary reason that Shatov changed his mind about faith and God. Shatov’s belief is however not complete and that is a key tension in the theistic arguments of the book. (Even Tikhon believes that his faith is not complete.)

Nikolay himself is able to dismiss both of them to some extent and say that he believes in neither of these things. He inspires endless devotion in both of them and yet, can walk away from them with profound indifference and ideological detachment. However, there are hints of his engagement in these conversations — him probing for answers while pretending that he does not care for them.

This conundrum comes to some clarity in the censored chapter At Tikhon’s where Nikolay confesses to his crimes and gives some real insight into his feelings and emotions. These are things that leak through as he tries to derive Tikhon’s opinion on his confession. His line of questioning here specifically reflects that he feels a need for something to anchor him — the need for faith. However he is too prideful to give into that need. He refuses Tikhon’s suggestion of repentance and instead wants to make his confession public on his own terms and keep his pride.

Where does his need for evil arise from? It seems that the lines between sadism and masochism blur in Nikolay. He inflicts pain on others not because he derives pleasure from their pain, but because it in turn, unsettles his conscience; and the torture that his own conscience subjects him to for committing an evil deed, is what gives him pleasure.

Nikolay thus represents an ideological void. We do not know what he believes in, most likely nothing. But there is a need for belief in him and he is trying to deal with that need. Because the solution of faith needs one to make a leap and thus a kind of surrender on one’s part, he is not able to take this solution (he has too much pride). The only other solution— the endless moral experimentation, has led him to a place where he is unable to clear his head of his own crime.

Ultimately, this is my reading of his character. Because he is so ambiguous about his own beliefs and there is little that he reveals of himself, it is difficult to diagnose him or dissect him fully. Someone on the internet said that people end up reflecting their own selves onto Stavrogin (just like the characters in the novel do) and that might be exactly what I am doing.

But while going through the Wikipedia page for the book, I came across the idea that Stavrogin is what happens when one starts thinking beyond good and evil. And this is a Nietzschean idea explored in his book Beyond Good and Evil, which is what I am planning to read sometime in the future to make more sense of Nikolay’s character.

Also worth exploring is the idea of ennui— existential boredom in Nikolay, which is evident in the way he acts during the duel and also usually towards Pyotr in their conversations.

The Political Action and Chaos

The political action of the book is carried out by Pyotr Stepanovich as he presents to a few people in the town the idea of a secret society with groups of five all over Russia who are trying to bring about a revolution. For these purposes, he is trying to bind together this group of people through collective guilt (again idea seeded by Nikolay). Whether such a network even exists is ambiguous and mostly reads like deception/exaggeration on Pyotr’s part.

He uses the frivolity of the Governor’s wife and her social and political ambitions to create an environment where such chaos can ensue in the town that structures come crumbling down, literally and figuratively. His idea is to do this all over Russia, and as everything crumbles, he plans to bring in the messiah-like figure of Ivan the Tsarevich (i.e. Nikolay Stavrogin) to rule over the people. This is why he wants Stavrogin on his side, which Nik refuses to do.

This part of the book explores things like social ambitions and interpersonal dynamics and how these things end up impacting socio-political events. Even though Yuliya (the Governor’s wife) is unaware of any revolution or secret society, she becomes the key reason that Pyotr is able to drive unrest on a large scale in their town.

Everything Else

Of course a lot of other things happen in the second part. Characters like Fedka the Convict are introduced, the situation of the Lebyadkins and Stavrogin’s conversations with Darya and Marya shed more light on his personhood and past, the search at Stepan Trofimovich’s house and his eventual conversation with the Governor and his wife leave us in a place where Stepan’s great idea has finally set out and is bound to reach some end.

I wrote extensively about Stavrogin because of my intrigue in him but I would love to hear your thoughts on his character and his motivations as well as all the other aspects of the novel and engage in discussion about them below. So feel free to share your thoughts and opinions!!

See you soon with Part 3!

Going into Demons, I was not exactly aware of the underlying (and upfront) political themes in the novel. Having read Crime and Punishment and The Idiot before this, I was surely expecting a psychological and philosophical exploration of an aspect of human existence— like the human conscience and ethics and aesthetics. But this book manages to be that and more.

While C&P was a close look at the inner workings of the mind of one person, Demons is an exploration of a town as a political unit. It also demands an understanding of the political atmosphere of Russia at the time of its writing. Many characters in the novel are known to have been inspired by real people in Russia. After reading the first part of the novel, these are the key things that stood out to me.

Cast of Characters

Initially, the novel seems to revolve around the characters of Varvara Petrovna and Stepan Trofimovich — their interpersonal dynamic as well as their intellectual and social ambitions. This centrality seems to be upended towards the end of Part I as a younger cast of characters begins taking center stage and become the key drivers of the novel’s actions.

Pyotr and Nikolay emerge as the two mysterious young men who are directly related to Stepan and Varvara but are essentially unknown to even them. Shatov’s character manages to stand out as someone who holds his own in arguments and seems to have a philosophical/metaphysical grounding that other characters lack, but he is also extremely volatile.

Through all this however, I found myself asking — what is it that Stepan represents? His weakness as a character also seems to reflect the weakness of his ideology. His intellect does not drive him to any relevant action and suddenly, he seems to lose all control as young people rush to the scene i.e. if he had any control in the first place.

Ideological Seeds

The first part is more social drama and gossip than politics and revolution (which are supposed to be the key themes of the book). However, the social drama seems to lay the groundwork for the exploration of these themes. Multiple ideological seeds are sown here which I am hoping would be developed in the later parts. Some of these that particularly stood out to me were—

1. The divide between Western Liberals and the Slavophiles - Stepan comes across as a caricature of a Western Liberal intellectual who “represents an idea”. What that idea is and how it is supposed to reform the Russian society is not clear. He enjoys an aristocrat’s patronage while maintaining these views that are rendered experientially obsolete because of his privilege. This hints at his irrelevance in society as a significant actor. There is an apparent ideological gap — between adopting Western ideas and staying true to Russian orthodox values and while Stepan is one of the people who have created this gap, he has not been able to introduce anything to fill it.

2. The argument between Stepan and Shatov - Shatov, on the other hand, exists on the other end of the same spectrum. He believes that the Western Liberal intellectuals like Stepan are removed from the reality of the Russian people and thus cannot comment on Russia’s state meaningfully. He understands God as a glue that holds the Russian people together and sees atheism as a kind of threat to Russia’s greatness. He also comes across as an outcast and removes himself from situations where he is expected to play a certain part in the society by people (eg. his rejection of Lizaveta’s book idea).

   “…all who cease to understand their own people and lose their ties with them, immediately and to the same extent, also lose the faith of their fathers, and either become atheists or indifferent.”

   This from Shatov made me wonder if the reverse is also true. Is belief in the God of the people necessary to have an understanding of or a connection with the people? Also, in what sense is God referred to here— as a religious symbol or a spiritual one?

3. The conversation between Kirillov and the narrator - Kirillov arrives on the scene out of nowhere and yet, an insightful discussion happens between him and the narrator which reveals his ideology. He believes that humans themselves, by conquering fear and pain, can become God. And the only sensible thing after this conquest of fear and pain would be suicide— which is an idea he himself is committed to. But one is forced to wonder what his ideology stems from— is it his need for freedom or is he apocalyptic and in despair?

   “Whoever doesn’t care whether he lives or doesn’t live, he will be the new man. Whoever conquers pain and fear, he himself will be God. And that other God will no longer be.”

4. Nikolay and Pyotr - These two characters feel like ideological voids by the end of Part I. Nikolay has a cold outlook and is idealized by the locals but the nothingness behind his eyes and indifference towards the consequences of his actions is almost repulsive. His very existence makes people uncomfortable. He reminds me of the protagonist in Albert Camus’s The Stranger whose emotionlessness makes people uneasy and is used as an argument against him in court. Even without knowing Nikolay, the narrative about him keeps taking its own shape amongst the townspeople. And he does not concern himself with correcting it or defending himself. Pyotr, on the other hand, is kind of a mess and immediately overshares to gain people’s trust. While Nikolay comes across as enigmatic, Pyotr appears confusing (and confused, is he playing a part though as the narrator points out?).

The Final Chapter (+questions I have from Part I)

Towards the end of Part I, a significant shift happens in the people who take center-stage in the story. Varvara and Stepan become less intriguing and the focus shifts to Nikolay, Pyotr and Shatov. The major questions I have after Part I are these -

1. Why did Shatov punch Nikolay and what kind of history do they share? Was the punch personal (because of Darya?) or are they old friends who have fallen out due to circumstances or ideological differences?

2. What exactly is Stepan’s worldview? He is an atheist plus a liberal. He speaks against both socialism and religion. Can socialism and atheism not go hand-in-hand? Is this dual criticism specific to Russia’s context?

3. What happened in Switzerland (and in Petersburg)? Lizaveta and Darya both seem to behave a certain way towards Nikolay which is confusing, but also are Marya and Nikolay actually married? What is it about Nikolay that keeps provoking such intense reactions in people?

If you have the answers or any questions of your own, let’s talk in the comments below.

See you soon with Part 2!

Marriage as an institution is shaped not only by individuals but by society. Its structure carries the burden of thousands of years of human history. It asks certain things of the people involved and the gendered differences in these asks are too stark to ignore. Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition, Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse collectively present a view of marriage that is unfairly sacrificial. So, can marriage be more than a sacrifice? Can marriage be without a sacrifice? Can marriage be an unbalanced sacrifice? These are the questions we ask ourselves.

Virginia Woolf’s Representation of Marriage

In To The Lighthouse, the Ramsay couple is, throughout the novel, primarily a couple tied to each other, devoid of their individuality – not in the complete sense, but in some irrevocable sense.

Their individual ambitions suffer at the hands of their marriage and the raising of eight kids. Nurturing a family demands a sacrifice of the self that both of them are struggling with for many years now, but to drastically different extents. They share a longing for an alternate life but in unequal measure.

Mrs Ramsay’s Invisible Labour

When a relationship progresses to a commitment like marriage and children, it is an active confirmation from both parties involved that they are ready to put in certain things to make this work. While Mrs Ramsay puts in everything – her time, love, affection, efforts to hold dinner party conversations and dinner parties alike, to put people together and form future couples, to console Mr Ramsay on his failures and keep his ego alive; Mr Ramsay struggles to make himself available even in his wife’s sadness.

Mr Ramsay’s ego comes alive in the pages of the book as a creature in itself that is tethered to him. This is an ego everyone has, yet it becomes so prominent in this case because of how this creature is fed and nurtured. It is suicidal, this little being which saw itself as a potential Shakespeare, as someone who would traverse the path from A to Z. And Mr Ramsay has nothing that can keep it alive, except, well, his wife.

He goes up to Mrs Ramsay again and again asking for consolation, hope, food for his ego, a line of praise or reassurance that it is not his fault that he is stuck at Q. And that is how he keeps it alive. Even after she is gone, he finds new people to demand food for his ego from.

His ambition is personal and sacred. He is a philosopher, has done respectable work, and wants to change the world. He struggles to see beyond a certain point because the image of his family keeps pulling him back or at least that is what he thinks. While his work is meaningful to him, to the world and in itself, what is bothering is what it costs the people in his life.

On the other hand, his wife does not find herself worthy of tying his shoelaces. She believes that it is disrespectful to him to come to her for reassurance and that the world would see him as lesser than he is.

“…it was their relation, and his coming to her like that, openly, so that anyone could see, that discomposed her; for then people said he depended on her, when they must know that of the two he was infinitely the more important, and what she gave the world, in comparison with what he gave, negligible.”

She cultivates a sadness and solitude of her own, a dream of doing something meaningful for the community, opening a hospital, a couple dairies; but mentioned once in passing, her dream does not occupy her all the time, nor does she withhold herself from her children or blame them in lieu of her ambitions. She even ends up carrying the burden of her husband’s wish but inability to comfort her and thus has to offer herself up for his comfort so he can feel better. This one event – their marriage, has shaped their lives, their years, even the history of the world maybe.

Mrs Ramsay and Lily end up emerging as contrasting characters, one giving up something inside her to protect her husband and family and the other refusing to make such a sacrifice by marrying. And yet, a part of Lily admires Mrs Ramsay but without wanting to be like her. The question is – can it ever be worth it? To lose oneself for someone else?

Arendt’s The Human Condition

Hannah Arendt gives us a language to describe what exactly women lose when marriage absorbs them. She classifies the human condition into three main categories – labour, work and action. In broad terms, these three categories can be described as follows – labour as biological survival and maintenance, work as creation and institution building, and action as political participation, recognition and being seen and remembered by others as a distinct ‘who’. When this classification is transposed on to the conventional concept of marriage, it presents a picture of the marital institution that looks heavily unbalanced in a certain direction.

Simone de Beauvoir, in her book The Second Sex, explores marriage as both burden and benefit. But these benefits and burdens are historically carried unequally by different sexes. The burden of physical and emotional labour in a marriage, in the Arendtian sense, falls on the shoulder of women who are expected to maintain the household, rear children and maintain conditions for the day to day survival of the family, while also providing emotional services to their husbands and children to ensure their emotional health, also linked to biological survival.

On the other hand, men unload their labour onto their wives and consider themselves free in the world to pursue the remaining two aspects of their existence i.e. work and action. This not only gives them the privilege of having their wives serve their physical and emotional needs, but also systematically allows them to build their names, identities and legacies in the world unfairly.

While Arendt in her definitions, clarifies that there is no moral hierarchy between labour, work and action; it is quite evident that society puts them in a very clear hierarchical order. Labour goes undervalued and unnoticed, work becomes our identity and legacy in the society and action becomes a privilege for the select few. Women’s domestic labour is not publicly recognized, not durable beyond family needs and is not allowed to crystallize into institutions. And so at the cost of two modes of women’s existence, we create a society that serves and remembers men.

Choice Matters

Even when modern movements talk about women being valued for their labour in the households, what makes the difference is the freedom to choose for oneself. Both men and women should be free to choose the aspects of the human condition that they want to invest their lives in. And this is the freedom that is at stake in the institution of marriage for women.

In this context, Amartya Sen’s capability approach comes to mind. Marriage is an economic decision too and by marrying, women seem to be giving up their freedom to choose i.e. they sacrifice access to certain capabilities and that becomes the modern marriage question. Is it worth it to give up the freedom to choose to enter into a burdensome institution?

This freedom to choose is what can allow women to live a full life, as per Arendtian definitions. Mrs Ramsay’s plight in To The Lighthouse can seem like something she is choosing for herself because of her inner monologue, but she really has no choice. She truly believes that she is intellectually inferior to her husband and actively withholds her worldview from him because she does not feel seen. She is living half a life in physical reality and the other half, in her head. This is what many women still have to do, everyday.

So the institution of marriage remains to be criticised. While modern marriages have evolved to a certain extent to share labour and make work and action equally accessible to both men and women, we still have a long way to go as a society. Women must have the freedom to create their own legacies and participate in public life as themselves. And we must ask ourselves – can sacrifice be meaningful if it is not freely chosen?

To be born is to be condemned to insurmountable, meaningless suffering — an abyss more inexhaustible than death. Reading Cioran’s The Trouble With Being Born is a peek into the mind of a person who has accepted that there is no objective to life – who observes the world through his knowledge of its absurdity and challenges himself by continuing to dwell in it.

Cioran reflects on time, reality, religion, philosophy but what haunts every page and thus explains the book’s name is his resentment for birth. He longs to be as “free as the stillborn” — suggesting that the moment we enter this world is the moment our slavery starts, also calling birth and chain synonyms.

Again and again, Cioran talks of a Paradise which does not exist after death but before birth. He calls birth “a much more inexhaustible abyss” than death, because while death once happened, leaves no space for any further contemplation, we cannot undo birth and go back to where we were before it happened. According to him, history is merely a detour that humans have to take in order to reach the condition “before consciousness”, implying that the life we live is a side-effect of this quest. The mind is the killer of any joy we can have in life, “the dagger in the flesh”.

“There was a time when time did not yet exist…. The rejection of birth is nothing but the nostalgia for this time before time.”

He believes he has achieved lucidity which “makes us free” but he also realizes that after attaining the said freedom we are left to live in a desert, and continuing to live here is a chore that he does only as a way of challenging himself to make it through another day. The quote- “Years and years to waken from that sleep in which the others loll; then years and years to escape that awakening…” reinforces his idea of being left in the desert to survive. He laments the moments when he is not able to remind himself of the baselessness of everything, for whenever he manages to do it, he does it with a feeling of ‘happiness’. He has become ‘unfit for illusion’.

On the other hand, he admits that in certain moments birth seems like “a calamity I would be miserable not to know” meaning that he is unable to disconnect from life despite his criticism of it. He clings to one unconscious hope which he says everyone in such a state keeps, and that “makes up for all the explicit others we have rejected, exhausted”- the thread that continues to tie him to life.

When we have a drastic change in belief, and think we have become disillusioned with the world; we either secretly start considering ourselves superior to others or just can’t go back to our previous beliefs because of how irrational they now seem, or both.

But according to Cioran, this is where suffering emerges. Consciousness is the cause of all suffering and the diminishing of “the kingdom of consciousness” is salvation.

“Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on.”

Knowledge entails inaction for acceptance of unreality leads to a detachment from the world. He longs for peace and realizes that only the ignorant are blessed with it. He places peace against ambition, which I believe is true for it is mostly in the moments when we forget about the things we want from life, that we experience joy which Cioran says is “pure in the essence”.

Admitting to having the defects that other human beings have, Cioran simultaneously says that he still finds whatever people do inconceivable. That is, he treads a very thin line maintaining a connection with the world while having the opinion that he has about its reality which he also thinks is not worth proving because- everything is unreal.

As pointed out in an episode of the podcast ‘Philosophize This’, it seems that his view on life was not necessarily a pessimistic one.

His beliefs about failure and the interest it lends to a life and an individual is a really interesting take on the idea of failure. Cioran had accepted it into his life as a companion and intentionally chose to live his life as a failure rather than the success that he actually was. He says in the book that “failure, even repeated, always seems fresh” while “insolent happiness” that comes from success makes a person rancid, stagnant and acidic.

He also admits to having felt contradictory feelings on different subjects at different times of his life, which is important to keep in mind while studying any philosopher’s work.

Cioran says that a writer must not succeed in detaching himself from the world because then he is lost. A detached writer has only one lens to look at the world, which either leaks this detachment into his entire work because it becomes his philosophy or what he writes is not true to what he believes or sees, or he loses the will to write anything altogether when the detachment sets in. He calls a book ‘a postponed suicide’ echoing when Virginia Woolf said that so many people use the pen when they cannot pull the trigger.

Cioran thus reflects on the absurdity of life while attempting to both settle within it and grapple with it. In some ways, he turns Camus’s question on suicide on its head – taking away death’s escapism and rooting it in what we can never know – the freedom of not being born.

“Two enemies—the same man divided.”

“Resurrection can happen only after comprehensive destruction.”

It stands true for Kat’s life and for the integration of the two Germanies, one of which stands erased.

Oftentimes in literature, the face of the lover has been compared to that of a stranger. The more we know of another human being, the more there is to know yet. What seems like an intimate “love story” in Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos vaporizes to leave behind a pair of people who know nothing of each other by the end.

For Kat, the protagonist of the book, it is difficult to identify what leads to her seeking out a relationship with someone who is 29 years her senior – Hans.

Her dad, who does not live with them, makes a few appearances and seems to have a healthy relationship with her and frequently drops lines of immense wisdom too. However, she does think– “For the first time in her life, she has the love of a grown man”. So is it the fact that he no longer lives with them that leads Kat down this path – seeking approval, companionship and love from a person who has lived an entire life before her?

As we sit in Kat’s mind, it is easy to believe that Hans is placing power in her hand in the beginning itself. Their affair would only go on until she wants it to. But even with his knowledge that it is he who must step back and be ready to be hurt in this dynamic, things change when trouble actually comes.

Hans is a manipulative partner who punishes Kat when she begins to grow into her womanhood and starts exploring life. His insecurities get the better of him as the promise he made to himself and the readers flounders and vanishes. He is a sadist, both physically and emotionally inflicting pain on Kat to keep her tied to himself. The cassettes being the glaring proof of that.

As their relationship ends, one cannot help but find parallels with My Dark Vanessa, in the residual feeling that Kat is left with. After everything, the love and the connection are too significant to be forgotten or regretted. No matter how wrong the partnership and the partner look in hindsight, she is left with what one can only assume to be some kind of defense of their relationship. Hans has changed her too significantly, has impressed upon her mind music and literature that has shaped her, has taught her sacrifice and punishment – has seen her grow from a girl into a woman.

“Will you come to my funeral?” – the opening line of the novel is a stark and bold depiction of the change in power dynamics as the story unfolds. By the end of it, the hurt and vulnerability that Hans was so scared of has happened nonetheless. The only difference is that he has done irreparable damage to Kat in the process.

That they love each other, seems to be the wrong question. There is no right question, honestly. Hans is hiding a personal history too complex and it seems to be the easier explanation that he is looking for some sort of comfort and escape in Kat.

The dilemma between selfishness to save his marriage and the need to protect Kat lives on in Hans throughout. It is difficult to decide what his motivations are. All he really does is avoid responsibility. First, to rid himself of the guilt of being with someone so much younger and then, to keep Kat tied to himself by manipulating her.

His major historical thing has happened, hers is happening. And so when she doesn’t make it to his funeral but later sifts through their letters left in boxes – personal histories of their truths and deceptions – we know that he is a part of her major historical thing but also apart from it.

“The world had made him extravagant and vain- Extravagance and vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish. Vanity, while seeking its own guilty triumph at the expense of another, had involved him in a real attachment, which extravagance, or at least its offspring, necessity, had required to be sacrificed.”(243) This is Elinor Dashwood, the heroine of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, psychologically analysing Willoughby after his final confession at Cleveland and finding the causes of his actions in external and internal factors that might have motivated him. She finds roots of his behavior in the working and structure of the society, identifies his fears and motives and takes a fairly empathetic approach. She commiserates him internally and even allows herself to call him “poor Willoughby” (246). This observation reflects a lot upon Elinor’s judgment-making ability and process and insight into others’ psyche.

Earlier in the novel, when Willoughby bids adieu to the Dashwoods at Barton cottage, Elinor reads embarrassment in his demeanor and thus grows suspicious of his intentions. She does not, however, use it to make a judgment on his character. Even after his conduct towards Marianne when they meet in London, she does not believe him “so unprincipled as to have been sporting with the affections of her sister from the first…” (130) because of the embarrassment she sees on his face. She fears that her sister’s attachment is one sided and that Willoughby is not romantically interested and thus does not place blame on him for not showing up or writing to Marianne when they are in London. She does not inquire about the matter from Marianne respecting her choice to keep the engagement, if there has been any, secret. Even after reading the heart-breaking letter Marianne received from Willoughby, Elinor simply believes that Willoughby was never attached and the cause of her sister’s misery is her own emotional disposition. While this was not true, as later revealed by the man himself, Elinor erred on the side of caution in raising her expectations of someone. All of this suggests that her method of making judgments is based solely on facts. This does not, however, ensure correctness of all her judgments because of lack of information at hand which mostly results from her abstinence from using hypothesis as evidence. Thus, her approach to the situation is very meticulous and practical. Elinor, therefore, emerges as an empathetic character who has an understanding of the human psychology. She is confident in her judgment of people’s characters and tries to fit their behavior with what she already knows about them.

In most of Jane Austen’s works, characters forming opinions about other characters, is a big part of the narrative. It is a study of how humans view and understand each other and what it says about the judge and the judged. To compare two people whose methods of forming opinions is fairly different is the motive of this essay. By the example of the characters of Elinor Dashwood and Mrs Jennings from the novel Sense and Sensibility, we can study two characters that have different methods of judgment. The reader is acquainted with Elinor’s impression of others because throughout the book, Austen accesses her consciousness the most; while Mrs Jennings’s opinions are made known due to her habit of instantly and unreservedly declaring them to the group. The very way in which the reader gets to know their opinions is an important indicator of the difference between their methods of judgment.

Both Mrs Jennings and Elinor know Willoughby for the same amount of time. Mrs Jennings does not show any signs of doubting Willoughby’s character much like everyone else. But as soon as his betrayal of Marianne is revealed she condemns him completely and does not doubt his villainous actions for a second. That is to say that she does not consider her own judgments as amounting to much and is likely to change them quickly. She does not display inner conflict between her opinion of him and his actions. She does not care to think about the intricacies of his decisions, in contrast to Elinor, but readily believes what is said of him.

This is further confirmed by the example of Lucy Steele. On receiving a letter from her, Mrs Jennings rambles about what a sweet girl she is and how well she writes, saying things like- “She is a good-hearted girl as ever lived” and “How attentive she is, to think of everybody” (203). But later when her marriage to Robert Ferrars, the younger brother of Edward Ferrars, is known, she calls her “a jilting girl” and a “worthless hussey” (273). Not only is her judgment of people proved wrong again and again, this also makes her more prone to disappointment because since she starts by assuming the best of everyone, she is in for a big disappointment whenever something contrary to her view happens or is revealed. On the other hand, Elinor is rarely surprised because of her limited expectations from people resulting from her understanding of them. Her emotional acumen is displayed in the scene where Lucy shares the secret of her engagement to Edward with Elinor. She quickly assesses the situation and composes herself accordingly.

Elinor and Mrs Jennings also have different priorities to judge people on the basis of. Mrs Jennings prioritizes the impact of someone’s actions on her close ones and views their actions from either an emotional or a societal perspective. She condemns Willoughby for hurting Marianne and Lucy for abandoning Edward and does not think beyond that. On the other hand, Elinor prioritizes psychological understanding and the person’s intentions. She gives value to her own perception of someone’s character and gives them the benefit of doubt as can be seen in the example of Willoughby.

Another example of Mrs Jennings’s less practical judgment skills is her thinking that Colonel Brandon would be happy to know that Marianne was available again after Willoughby’s betrayal. She “expected to see the effect of Miss Dashwood’s communication, in such an instantaneous gaiety on Colonel Brandon’s side, as might have become a man in the bloom of youth, of hope and happiness…” (146) Even though she had known Colonel Brandon for longer than the Dashwoods, she was unable to get to know him on a level where she could understand not the nature of his affections but his very character. It appears as if she makes acquaintances out of everyone readily but spends little time getting to know them.

Yet another difference is in the social boundaries they set up. Mrs Jennings openly hints at the “romance” between Marianne and Willoughby indicated by her saying “I hope you like your house, Miss Marianne” (50), after their visit to Allenham. She recklessly jumps to conclusions especially about people’s love lives while Elinor refuses to draw a conclusion on the matter of Marianne and Willoughby until their engagement is confirmed by one of the pair. Mrs Jennings, on overhearing bits of a conversation between Colonel Brandon and Elinor assumes that he proposed her for marriage and births a misunderstanding. Elinor, however, practices boundaries to the extent that she does not ever try to influence Marianne’s opinion of Colonel Brandon even though she is very aware of his feelings for her. She is empathetic towards him and quietly contemplates his position a few times but lets the thing play out without interference- the method most likely to ensure happiness of both.

The motive is not to judge one method as right and another as wrong, but still the approach taken by Elinor does have some benefits over the one taken by Mrs Jennings. First, it is much more empathetic and thus, regards and validates the feelings of others. While Mrs Jennings goes about spilling people’s feelings and using them to make jokes, however good-hearted, in group conversations; Elinor establishes boundaries and does not cross them even if it’s her sister. This difference is what leads to Marianne saying the following of Mrs Jennings- “Her kindness is not sympathy; her good nature is not tenderness. All that she wants is gossip, and she only likes me now because I supply it.”(147) While this might be a fairly harsh judgment and not a well-rounded one, it is not an entirely unreasonable one. One can definitely see where Marianne is coming from. The extremity of the opinion can be attributed to Marianne’s own judgment-making methods which Elinor thinks are governed “by the irritable refinement of her own mind” (147). Now, if we look at Mrs Jennings’s character from the eyes of Elinor Dashwood, it is but ignorance and an open nature rather than an evil heart or bad intentions that make her act the way she does.

Second, it leads to much less personal disappointment. Elinor’s astuteness saves her from being disappointed in her opinions of Lucy and Willoughby and their actions did not make her feel bad about herself. On the other hand, someone who thought of them highly was sure to be disappointed both in them and in their own self, for believing them to be as good as Mrs Jennings did, because of their character revelation.

The case can also be made that Elinor’s observation and interest in these people was motivated by personal reasons because of the implications they had on her and her family. Willoughby and Colonel Brandon were both of interest to her because of their connections to Marianne. Lucy Steele became of interest to her when she was informed of her engagement to Edward Ferrars. Also, because Elinor knew Willoughby’s entire truth, it was easier for her to take a different and kinder approach. But still, Mrs Jennings’s depthless judgment of these people is difficult to ignore after all the time they spend around each other.

Mrs Jennings judgment of people is also blinded by the conventional ideas of marriage and money and marriage for money, and her eagerness to play the role of matchmaker or see people settled. It can also be argued that Jane Austen uses the character of Elinor to voice her own moral convictions. While Elinor does not openly challenge the conventional ideas of marriage to someone’s face, she does make some sarcastic remarks here and there displaying her thought process. On her brother’s remarks about Miss Morton marrying Robert instead of Edward, she says, “The lady, I suppose, has no choice in the affair” (217) and then lets John’s ignorance of what she means be the end of the conversation. Since the novel reads mostly from Elinor’s consciousness, it is her thoughts that are bound to have the greatest chunks of the author’s own viewpoints. Mrs Jennings however, comes off more as a comedic relief character, not to undermine her importance to the plot.

In conclusion, the process of forming opinions and dissecting the characters of others differs from individual to individual. Several different approaches can be taken. It reflects the person’s grasp on human character and psychology and their ability to step inside someone else’s shoes. Both Elinor and Mrs Jennings exhibit distinct methods and an equally distinct set of character traits. While Elinor’s method is more mentally laboring, it also seems worth it. Though at the same time, Mrs Jennings’s not very laboring method seems like an easy and relaxing route to take too. Even if it makes her prone to disappointment, it surely saves her from overthinking and mental exhaustion.

Works cited

1. Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility, Oxford World’s Classics, 2019

Note: This is an essay I wrote for a competition almost 4 years ago, so judge it accordingly, please:)

Aldo, one of the protagonists in Olivie Blake’s book “Alone With You In The Ether” is a theoretical mathematician, harboring a very detached obsession with hexagons. He talks about time travel, the hexagonal key that needs to be turned to make it comprehensible and the possibility of multiverses that we nonetheless cannot jump across. The lattice of these naturally significant six-sided polygons underlies the entire book. They are the first point of curiosity between our leads- what draws Raegan towards Aldo as well as the resolution to their emotionally tumultuous partnership.

They are also the reason I went on to a search engine immediately after completing the book. I wanted to test the book, which is obviously categorized as literary fiction, for scientific facts. And I found interesting things. The thing closest to what Aldo kept alluding to in the book was time crystals- strange quantum systems where particles enter a repeating loop of motion through time without consuming energy. They are a phase of matter- a unique way particles arrange themselves and behave over time. While not hexagonal in structure, their stability and energy efficiency conceptually echo the logic of hexagons.

All across nature, architecture and fiction, hexagons are associated with stability and efficiency. Whenever things settle, they seem to settle hexagonally- arrangements of least energy, highest stability. Honeycombs are the simplest, most popular examples. Hexagons save energy and space and thus, are bees’ favorite choice. Followed closely by graphene- carbon atoms arranged in hexagonal patterns, forming an insanely strong and light material. There are hexagon shaped storms on Saturn and lava cooled into hexagonal patterns at Giant’s Causeway in Ireland.

Architects, taking inspiration from nature, use hexagonal patterns to minimize material usage, to make efficient use of space while creating designs that are aesthetically pleasing. They are efficient- a lot packed in a little space. All in all, ‘hexagons are the bestagons’, as famously put forth by a CGP Grey video on YouTube which will be highly insightful if you want to understand this visually.

Coming back to Aldo’s character in the book, it is interesting to note that he himself uses the idea of hexagons to bring stability back into his life after a near overdose. He seems indifferent to death every time he talks about the incident, and on the surface, it comes across as an easy decision for him. He is living because his father asked him to, and he is using hexagons as the means to bring stability into his life.

The hexagons are more than just a recurring theme keeping Aldo interesting to Raegan. For Aldo, they are a survival mechanism, an escape which he admits to, something he is hanging on to. And even though it is not their hexagonal structure that is lending Aldo’s life stability, it is still the concept. This metaphor of balance and settlement, of stability and ease reflects throughout the book. When Raegan, in her first original artwork, expresses the way she feels about Aldo in the form of these shapes, it means that he is her hexagon. He is the object of stability in her life, something she can ease into at the end of her days. Raegan comes back to Aldo as nature comes back to the shape of hexagons, seeking out stability and low energy, efficient environments where survival does not take energy. A direct connection to the idea of time crystals- perpetual motion with no energy input.

This way the concept ties to both their emotional and mental states while also holding true to its own physical and real-life meaning. Reaching out for something in honeycombs, or in the structures of graphene or even in time crystals- something that seems straight out of a science fiction novel, is then the reader’s prerogative.

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